diary
Back when a heart attack wasn't all that likely for me (I still haven't had one, let me hasten to add), I was plagued with hypochondriacal heart crises.
Oh, four or five, maybe, over two years, but I mean, that's kind of a lot. One was in Providence, Rhode Island. In the ER they gave me Ativan and I remember that when the anxiety abruptly vanished without any accompanying thoughts (of the kind with which one might talk oneself down), I was bereft. What came at the end of anxiety wasn't its opposite, calm, and also not relief, just a void the anxiety had papered over.
I felt that way today after turning in my re-certification form for my subsidized apartment. I've been dreading it for two months, or, really, ever since I moved in. (This one building manager filled my head with stories about people losing their certification.) For those two months, I kept noticing I was sad, like I was retreating in advance of losing this apartment. The details don't matter, and maybe it's not done yet. But today it was gone, all at once, as a focus for anxiety.
A lot of little mortifications have piled up over the last month or two, the same month or two in which I crept back into being depressed and anxious (for what felt like the first time in a year). Things that I guess still mortify me enough that I don't care to mention most of them even now, except I tried to work out an arrangement with someone, something in lieu of love, but not only did it not last much more than a week, but it was all the sadder for having had so few possibilities in the first place. That really is the main one, but as I ignored it these other parapraxes crop up, till last night I stumbled through a dance class with a sprained or broken toe.